On First Looking into Chapman's Homer - Poems | Academy of American Poets Academy of American Poets The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization. browse poems & poets sign up to receive a new poem-a-day in your inbox sign up Pirate Story by Robert Louis Stevenson Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson Loneliness by Trumbull Stickney read this poet's poems English Romantic poet John Keats was born on October 31, 1795, in London. The oldest of four children, he lost both his parents at a young age. His father, a livery-stable keeper, died when Keats was eight; his mother died of tuberculosis six years later.

After his mother's death, Keats's maternal grandmother appointed two London merchants, Richard Abbey and John Rowland Sandell, as guardians. Abbey, a prosperous tea broker, assumed the bulk of this responsibility, while Sandell played only a minor role. When Keats was fifteen, Abbey withdrew him from the Clarke School, Enfield, to apprentice with an apothecary-surgeon and study medicine in a London hospital. In 1816 Keats became a licensed apothecary, but he never practiced his profession, deciding instead to write poetry. Around this time, Keats met Leigh Hunt, an influential editor of the Examiner, who published his sonnets "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" and "O Solitude." Hunt also introduced Keats to a circle of literary men, including the poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Wordsworth . The group's influence enabled Keats to see his first volume, Poems by John Keats, published in 1817. Shelley, who was fond of Keats, had advised him to develop a more substantial body of work before publishing it. Keats, who was not as fond of Shelley, did not follow his advice.

Endymion, a four-thousand-line erotic/allegorical romance based on the Greek myth of the same name, appeared the following year. Two of the most influential critical magazines of the time, the Quarterly Review and Blackwood's Magazine, attacked the collection. Calling the romantic verse of Hunt's literary circle "the Cockney school of poetry," Blackwood's declared Endymion to be nonsense and recommended that Keats give up poetry. Shelley, who privately disliked Endymion but recognized Keats's genius, wrote a more favorable review, but it was never published. Shelley also exaggerated the effect that the criticism had on Keats, attributing his declining health over the following years to a spirit broken by the negative reviews. Keats spent the summer of 1818 on a walking tour in Northern England and Scotland, returning home to care for his brother, Tom, who suffered from tuberculosis. While nursing his brother, Keats met and fell in love with a woman named Fanny Brawne. Writing some of his finest poetry between 1818 and 1819, Keats mainly worked on "Hyperion," a Miltonic blank-verse epic of the Greek creation myth.

He stopped writing "Hyperion" upon the death of his brother, after completing only a small portion, but in late 1819 he returned to the piece and rewrote it as "The Fall of Hyperion" (unpublished until 1856). That same autumn Keats contracted tuberculosis, and by the following February he felt that death was already upon him, referring to the present as his "posthumous existence." In July 1820, he published his third and best volume of poetry, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems. The three title poems, dealing with mythical and legendary themes of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance times, are rich in imagery and phrasing. The volume also contains the unfinished "Hyperion," and three poems considered among the finest in the English language, "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Ode on Melancholy," and "Ode to a Nightingale." The book received enthusiastic praise from Hunt, Shelley, Charles Lamb, and others, and in August, Frances Jeffrey, influential editor of the Edinburgh Review, wrote a review praising both the new book and Endymion.

The fragment "Hyperion" was considered by Keats's contemporaries to be his greatest achievement, but by that time he had reached an advanced stage of his disease and was too ill to be encouraged. He continued a correspondence with Fanny Brawne and—when he could no longer bear to write to her directly—her mother, but his failing health and his literary ambitions prevented their getting married. Under his doctor's orders to seek a warm climate for the winter, Keats went to Rome with his friend, the painter Joseph Severn. He died there on February 23, 1821, at the age of twenty-five, and was buried in the Protestant cemetery. Selected Bibliography The Poems of John Keats (1978) The Poems of John Keats (1970) The Poems of John Keats (1970) Collections: The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats (1831) Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St.

Agnes, and Other Poems (1820) Endymion: A Poetic Romance (1818) Poems (1817) Letters of John Keats: A New Selection (1970) The Letters of John Keats (1958) Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats (1848) Drama Otho The Great: A Dramatic Fragment (1819) King Stephen: A Dramatic Fragment (1819) A Short Analysis of Keats’s ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ | Interesting Literature A Short Analysis of Keats’s ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ Posted by interestingliterature A summary and analysis of a classic John Keats poem ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ is a sonnet composed by Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) in October 1816, when he was just 20 years old. The poem focuses on Keats’s initial encounter with an English translation of Homer’s poetry by George Chapman (c.

1559-1634), likening the experience to that of an astronomer discovering a new planet or an explorer sighting an unknown land. Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star’d at the Pacific — and all his men Look’d at each other with a wild surmise — Silent, upon a peak in Darien. The form of the poem is, specifically, an Italian or a Petrarchan sonnet rather than an English sonnet – which seems odd, given the poem’s focus on English literature (the English Chapman’s translation of epic poetry), but which makes more sense given the poem’s other subject, namely the Mediterranean as a seat of literary culture (Homer, the Greek poet whom Chapman translated).

The first four lines discuss the poet’s travels in the ‘realms of gold’ (whether these are real travels or travels in the imagination remains unclear), and the second quatrain introduces Homer, epic Greek poet who wrote The Iliad and The Odyssey, which tell the story of the Trojan War and Odysseus’ journey home following the war. But Keats could not appreciate Homer because he cannot read Greek. So he cannot read Homer’s words. That is, until he encounters George Chapman’s English translation of Homer, at which point the world of the ancient Greek poet is suddenly and magically opened up to him. The final six-line unit (or sestet) of the poem then likens the poet’s experience of ‘discovering’ Homer to the discovery of a new planet (sure enough, the planet Uranus had been discovered by William Herschel in 1781) and to a Spanish conquistador’s sighting of the Pacific ocean.

(This is the sort of thing a Metaphysical Poet like John Donne had done in his poetry in the early seventeenth century.) These two analogies are linked subtly through Keats’s use of the word ‘swims’ (‘a new planet swims into his ken’), with this watery word leading into the description of Cortez staring at the Pacific. So much for what the poem is about; but we should also look at how Keats says it. At the moment when the poet discovers Chapman’s translation, for instance – a translation which makes available to the poet this whole world of Homer’s imagination – the language of Keats’s line becomes clear and plain: ‘Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold’. This subtly contrasts with the earlier use of grander or polysyllabic words (‘realms’, ‘kingdoms’, ‘fealty’, ‘Apollo’, ‘demesne’, ‘serene’), reflecting the sudden simplicity and ease with which Keats can approach Homer, through Chapman’s English version.

Note: the poem contains a factual error: it was Balboa, rather than Cortez, who would have stood ‘Silent, upon a peak in Darien’ (Cortez conquered the North American lands of modern-day Mexico; Darien is in Panama at the top of South America). Whether this error mars the poem or not depends on your view of poetry (and assuming that the error is an error on Keats’s part, rather than artistic licence). Image: John Keats (photogravure after J. Severn), via Wellcome Images ; Wikimedia Commons . Share this: "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" Bookmark this page Manage My Reading List Summary Keats has wide experience in the reading of poetry and is familiar with Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, but not until now has he had the special aesthetic enjoyment to be gained from reading Homer in the translation of George Chapman. For him, the discovery of Homer as translated by Chapman provides the same kind of overwhelming excitement felt by an astronomer who has discovered a new planet or by Cortez when he first saw the Pacific from a summit in Central America.

Analysis Keats composed his most famous sonnet when he was only twenty years old and had comparatively little experience in the writing of sonnets. The poem is brilliant testimony of the effect of poetry on Keats. He had spent a night in the autumn of 1816 reading poetry with his friend Charles Cowden Clarke, who introduced him to some of the best passages in George Chapman's translation of Homer. Keats was delighted with the vigorous language of the Elizabethan; to him, Chapman spoke out "loud and bold." After Keats left Clarke, around daybreak, he walked to his lodgings, sat down at his desk, wrote his tribute to Chapman, and had a copy of it on his friend's breakfast table by ten o'clock in the morning. The poem seems to have been composed in the white heat of excitement, in a flash of inspiration. Keats made very few changes in it, but the changes he made show that he realized that inspiration is not enough; it must be followed by critical judgment. Keats' changes in the poem are all improvements. It is appropriate that the finest poem in Keats' first volume of poetry should be about poetry. At the time, poetry meant more to him than anything else in the world.

He was on the point of giving up the security of a career in medicine for the uncertainties of a career in poetry. The first four lines of "Chapman's Homer" are a statement of the experience he has already had as a reader of poetry: "Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold . . ." In poetry he has found the gold that Cortez, and the other conquistadors he had read about in William Robertson's History of America, had searched for so feverishly. As Keats is still young, there are innumerable discoveries of "realms of gold" awaiting him. In "Chapman's Homer," he excitedly reports one such discovery. To convey to the reader the thrill of discovery he has experienced in hearing his friend Clarke read from Chapman's Homer to him, he uses two smiles that are both beautiful and apt. "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken." The discovery of a new planet is so rare that only one had been made between ancient times and 1781, when Sir William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus.

Keats, of course, may not have had Herschel in mind, but it was the rarity of such a discovery and the emotions which would overwhelm the discoverer that counted. Nothing less would give the reader an adequate idea of what happened to Keats when he "heard Chapman speak out loud and bold." "Swims," the verb used to describe the way in which a heavenly body would move into the circular lens of an astronomer's telescope, suggests perfectly the motion of a planet as seen from the earth. The second simile used by Keats is unquestionably the most impressive part of the sonnet. It is made up of a number of details that fit together into an artistically pleasing whole. Cortez is "stout," that is, fearless, and he is alert, "with eagle eyes." Only men such as he discover Pacific Oceans. His men stand about him in silent awe, looking "at each other with a wild surmise." Their imaginations are flooded by a bewildering variety of guesses as to what lies beyond the horizon, new Americas perhaps, filled with gold and fabulous jewels and untold possibilities of further discoveries. They are so choked with emotion that they cannot speak.

This is one of the great moments of history, and Keats boldly appropriates it to express his own feelings of having made a thrilling discovery beyond which there may lie countless other similar discoveries as he increases his acquaintance with the world of poetry. The two similes that swam "into his ken" as the poem formed itself in his mind are in keeping with the language of travel and discovery that he uses in the octave of his sonnet. They give it a unity of imagery that makes of the whole a tightly knit statement of what was for Keats, ardent lover of poetry that he was, a profoundly felt experience. A Petrarchan sonnet must not only be unified, like any other poem, but the thought must also make a change of direction, or "turn," at the beginning of the sestet. Keats' turn is his two comparisons taken from astronomy and exploration. Unity and coherence are assured not only by carrying the idea of discovery all the way through the poem, but also by using the linking words "Much" and "Oft" to begin the two halves of his octave and the word "Then" to begin his sestet.

Keats, in spite of his limited experience in sonnet writing before "Chapman's Homer," composed what is probably one of the finest Petrarchan sonnets in English poetry. In his excitement, Keats substituted the name of Cortez for Balboa in his sonnet. In his school days he had read about Cortez' conquest of Mexico and Balboa's discovery of the Pacific Ocean on an expedition in Darien, an old name for part of Central America, in William Robertson's History of America. In search of a historical example of an exciting discovery, Keats put Cortez where historically Cortez never was and made him seem to be the discoverer of the Pacific Ocean. It is not known whether Keats or any of his friends ever became aware of the error. It is a slight blemish in a fine poem, but, as many critics have pointed out, in poetry one looks for truth in human nature rather than for historical truth. Ideally, both should go together.

On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer | Poetry | Scottish Poetry Library On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer Poem Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne: Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien. John Keats Poet John Keats John Keats was born in London, apprenticed to an apothecary-surgeon when he was 15, and licensed as an apothecary in 1816 but abandoned this profession for poetry. His first volume was published in 1817, attracting some good reviews but later Lockhart's attack on the 'Cockney school'.

Endymion was published in 1818, the same year that Keats and his friend Charles Brown toured the Lakes, spent July and August in Scotland, and briefly visited Northern Ireland. After the death of his brother in December, Keats moved to Brown's house in Hampstead and there wrote a succession of brilliant poems including 'La Belle Dame sans Merci' and the Odes. He also met the love of his life, Fanny Brawne. His second volume, Lamia... and other poems, was published in 1820, and was generally well received. For the sake of his declining health he went to Rome with his friend Severn, but died there of tuberculosis aged 26. He is regarded as one of the great Romantic poets of the second generation, along with Shelley and Byron. T.S. Eliot described his letters as 'certainly the most notable and most important ever written by any English poet'. About this poem About On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer Introduced by a variety of writers, artists and other guests, the Scottish Poetry Library’s classic poem selections are a reminder of wonderful poems to rediscover.

Jacob Polley on 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer': Keats's wonderful sonnet was written in the early hours of one morning in October 1816. Having spent the night reading a copy of George Chapman's 1616 translation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey , Keats returned home from Clerkenwell to Dean Street, where he quickly wrote out a draft of the poem, which he then sent back to Clerkenwell, to his friend Charles Cowden Clarke, with whom he'd sat up all night, excitedly reading. Reading and excitement: these are the currents that give the poem its undiminished charge – a thrilling crackle so recognisable to me as a reader and sharer of writing and books. Indeed, the poem could be set in stone at the entrance to every library in the country, so evocative is it of imagination fired by the discovery of words on a page. The poem is really an extended metaphor, in which the ‘realms of gold' are both Homer's ancient Grecian realms, ‘travelled' as Keats read about them, and also the gold-embossed spines and gilt-edged pages of the books themselves.

The poem never mentions ‘reading', ‘pages' or ‘books', and yet Chapman's book, which is what's being ‘first looked into', is allowing Keats to imaginatively rise above the fact of turning a page and reading printed words and to use the individual, physical edition of Chapman's book to evoke the general freedom and sense of discovery fostered by reading and imagining. The feeling induced as we read the poem is of pure experience, unmediated by words. Thus the narrator ‘travels', ‘sees', ‘is told', ‘breathes', ‘hears' and ‘feels', and it is as if Keats is plunging – and plunging us – through the portal of the page into the very worlds described on the pages he has read. If this plunging through portals suggests to you one of those fantastical children's stories with which we have become so familiar, I would concur with the suggestion. For headlong imagining, or make-believe, is what the poem induces above all. Metaphor can both infuse a thing with grandiosity – saying we build houses with red gold bricks, for instance – and also diminish something – if we call a crown, for example, a twist of foil.

In the poem, Keats infuses books, writing and reading with grandiosity. The first line of his poem does not run: ‘Much have I browsed among the library shelves', because the poet's intention is to have it both ways – or even several ways – simultaneously; he wants to write a poem about reading and about exploring, about Chapman's actual leather-bound book and about the very classical realms and kingdoms of which he feels he has been given a pure, unmediated experience by the words in the book. But the current of metaphor – from the Greek, meaning ‘to transfer' – always runs both ways, and in Keats's poem, the aggrandisement of reading can't help but contain a force to the contrary, a kind of gravitational pull back down to earth that provokes us to ask: ‘If the poet meant plain old books when he wrote ‘realms of gold', then why didn't he just say so?

If he didn't mean that he'd actually seen , with his own eyes, many western islands, and instead that he'd just read about them, then why not just say that too?' These questions, barked with gruff, fatherly reasonableness, are at the heart of what it is to engage or not with poetry and stories. I think the poem is thrilling partly because Keats is thrilled to be trying on the costume, not only of a broad-shouldered, Cortez-like explorer, but also of a discoverer and user of words, and a specifically literary register, which bring him suddenly into closer companionship, not only with his friend, Charles Cowden Clarke, but also with the great writers of the past. The thrill is a boyish thrill, a non-authoritarian thrill in a ragbag of references – to Greek gods, to the discovery of Uranus by F.W. Herschel, as it was described in a book about astronomy we know Keats had been given, and to Cortez and the discovery of the Pacific, as it was recounted in William Robertson's History of America .

Keats, in this poem, is discovering his gift, and we are thrilled by the discovery, just as his friend, for whom the poem was a kind of gift, must also have been thrilled, and as Keats himself was thrilled by Chapman's highly-charged response to the crackle left in Homer's pages. This piece comes from Jacob Polley's work as Poet Partner with the Scottish Poetry Library's partner collection in Dumfries and Galloway Libraries and with Dumfries and Galloway Arts Association, when he talked to reading groups about the pleasures of discovering poetry. The Poet Partners scheme, and other work with partner collections, is funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. Read more about Jacob Polley On First Looking into Chapman's Homer The Octet (lines 1-8) Much have I traveled in the realms of gold The phrase "realms of gold" functions in a number of ways. "Realms" starts the image cluster of locations--"states," "kingdoms" "demesnes." These words, as well as "in fealty," suggest political organization. The phrase also symbolizes the world of literature or, if you prefer, imagination.

What is Keats saying about the value of this world., i.e., why describe it as realms of gold, rather than of lead or brass, for instance? Why does he use the plural "realmS," rather than the singular "realm"? Finally, "realms of gold" anticipates the references in the sestet to the Spanish Conquistadores in the New World, for whom the lust for gold was a primary motive. The repetition of "l" sounds in "travelled," "realms," and "gold" emphasizes the idea and ties the words together. And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. The high, even holy function that poets fulfill is indicated by their being the servants of a god, Apollo, and having sworn to follow him (with the suggestion of their having consecrated their lives to him). "Fealty," in addition, indicates their dedication to Apollo and, by extension, to their calling, the writing of poetry. With the reference to poets, Keats moves from those who read (or who experience through poets' imaginations) to those who create poetry (or who express their own imaginations).

Then the poem narrows to one particular poet who rules the realm of poetry, i.e., whose genius and inspired poetry raise him above even dedicated poets. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told To emphasize the extent of Homer's genius and his literary accomplishments, Keats modifies "expanse" (which means "extensive") with an adjective which also means "extensive," i.e., the adjective "wide." That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; "Deep-browed" refers to Homer's intellect. (We use the adjective "deep" colloquially with a similar meaning today, in such phrases as "a deep thought" or "she's a deep thinker.") Yet did I never breathe its pure serene By breathing in the "pure serene," he makes it a part of himself; would the same effect be achieved if he walked or ran through Homer's demesne (his poetry)? What is Keats saying about the necessity of poetry (how important is breathing)? This line and the next line contrast Keats's knowledge of Homer's reputation and his experiencing the genius of Homer's poetry in Chapman's translation.

What are your assocations with the words "pure" and "serene"-- positive, negative, neutral? Note that these words apply to both the poetry of Homer and the translation by Chapman. Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold; On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer: Lines 1-8 Summary On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line. Lines 1-2 Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Right from the get-go, we have a first-person speaker . Now, it's never a good idea to confuse speaker and poet. Even when a poem is written in first person, that poet could be speaking in character. In this case, though, it's just like Keats to start us off with a reference to himself. The Romantics were notoriously self-centered. We don't mean that too rudely, it's just that, in contrast to previous generations who wrote about the external world, they wrote about their own experience.

If this poem were written a hundred years earlier, it probably would have been called "Chapman's Homer." But Keats wants to talk about his experience reading the book. There's also a metaphor right off the bat. What are "realms of gold"? Well, a couple of things, most likely. From the title, we understand that he is talking about the realms of literature and art. He's saying that he's read a lot of books in his day, but hadn't seen nothing until ol' Chapman came around. But he's also setting up some of the imagery of an explorer, which he will return to at the end. The new world was the place explorers went to seek fortunes, particularly on the look-out for precious metals. It's important to see this verb from Keats: "travell'd." (This is just an abbreviation of "travelled," in case you're wondering.) At this point in his life, he hadn't made any significant trips. He hadn't seen any of these things. But in the wonderful world of poetry, we don't call that fraud, we call it metaphor.

And really, we've all felt that way—a great book, a great movie does have the power to take us to a whole new place. Keats claims to have been around. He descends in scale from entire realms, to states and then to kingdoms. Generally, poets use lists (often lists of three) to convey a wide range. Metaphorically, then, he is telling us that he's read all kinds of poetry. Lines 3-4 Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Look, you're going to find out either way, so we might as well tell you now: Keats is, well, not so good with his social studies. If he's talking about islands that have anything to do with Apollo, he's talking about islands on the Aegean sea, the islands from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. But here's the thing—that's on the eastern side of Greece, and it's sure a long way east of London, where Keats was when he wrote the poem. So why does Keats talk about western islands? He's not really an idiot, he's just being very sneaky.

Once again, Keats is setting us up for imagery of explorers heading off to the new world (and the West Indies). We really are supposed to be picturing Greece, too. These were the islands where amazing things happened to Odysseus and his crew on their long journey home. The Cyclops, the lotus-eaters, dudes getting turned into hogs—you name it. A "bard" is a poet, usually one who spoke his poems for entertainment. They are particularly associated with the epic tradition. It's worth noting that Keats felt called to write epic poetry and adored bards such as Homer, Shakespeare and Milton. "Fealty" is a medieval term for loyalty, referring specifically to tenants owing fealty to their lords. In this case, the bards owed loyalty to the god of poetry who governed these poetry-inspiring isles. Keats might not technically have believed in Apollo, but he had a more than healthy respect for the Greek exaltation of poetry. Once, he and his friend Leigh Hunt fashioned and wore laurel crowns for an entire evening. Young Keats even wrote a poem about the occasion .

Lines 5-6 Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; "Oft" is a tots a shorter way to say "often." We hear people complain all the time about all the apostrophes and weird shortenings. Why do they do that? And we smile and say: "IDK." But then we say, "J/K" and add a smiley face, because anytime you see a shortened word in a poem, odds are that it has something to do with preserving the meter . For more on that in this poem, check out " Form and Meter ." The "wide expanse" is a metaphor for Homer's sprawling epic poems. Keats, like other young men, believed that size mattered. He became obsessed, almost immediately, with writing a long epic poem. In fact, most of his famous sonnets deal with this desire to write longer poetry. Think about it: all the imagery so far in this poem has been BIG. That's just what we'd expect. Sadly, Keats is most well-known for his shorter poems. Most of his longer works were forced and widely criticized.

It's interesting that Keats says he has only "been told" of Homer's work. By age twenty-one, he would have almost certainly have read a version of Homer. This probably serves as another indication of how highly he values Chapman's translation. (Biography note: "Chapman" is George Chapman , an English dramatist of the Renaissance period.) Before reading Chapman's Homer, all those other versions seemed tragically secondhand. More literally, though, Keats probably knew some Latin, but couldn't read Homer in his original Greek. Why is Homer "deep-brow'd"? Did he just need some manscaping on his unibrow? Maybe. He lived a long time ago. Actually, this is an epithet , something commonly used by Homer to identify characters. Because poets would speak their poems aloud to the audiences, they would attach certain identifying labels to their characters, such as 'gray-eyed Athena' or 'wily Odysseus.' When the epithet is more metaphorical like this one, it's also called a kenning . "Deep-brow'd" refers to Homer's wisdom, shown by the deep furrows in his forehead.

"Demesne" is a super-old version of a word we still use: domain. Keats is heaping praise on Homer for reigning supreme over the epic tradition. Lines 7-8 Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Sonnets always have turns. (Oh, did we mention that this is a sonnet ? Well, it is, gang. Now, scootch over to " Form and Meter " for more on that form of poetry.) No, we're not talking about crossing lanes here. By "turn" we mean a shift in the poem's logic, moving from one point to the next. These two lines wrap up the first section, called the octave (eight lines, octave—get it?). They give us a neat little set-up for the second section of the poem by turning the poem toward its main argument. And it does all that with the word "yet." Keats goes on and on about everything he's read and the amazing realms he's seen, but now he drops the bomb—they were all nothing compared to Chapman's poetry. Notice that we get our first really physical detail.

Sure we've seen realms and kingdoms and talked about Homer and Apollo, but here we "breathe" air. We actually feel something real. That's exactly the point—that's just what Chapman's Homer did for Keats. He took what was more abstract and made it real. Look at the flip-flopped syntax —it feels like this ought to read: "Yet I did never breathe…" Instead, it begins like a question. That's a sneaky way to draw the reader in and put something at stake. He answers the question in the next line, before he's even asked it. But for that one line, we are wondering just like him: did he never breathe its pure serene? We're aren't sure what Homer Keats is talking about here in line seven. "Serene"? This is the guy who wrote about poking out a monster's eye with a burning spike, who dreamed up a belching whirlpool monster, and a multi-headed, body-chomping cliff-dweller. Homer's stories are a lot of things, but they aren't serene. This shows how focused Keats is on the beauty of poetry.

For Keats, it isn't the content of the story that makes a poem sing, but the language itself. And the Homer he discovers in Chapman's translation has a gorgeous voice. Even if he is talking about shrieking sirens. That's also why the verbs "heard" and "speak" are so important in line eight. Epic poets were meant to be heard. The words were meant to boom and echo in the ears of the audience. ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ by John Keats | A poem for every day A poem for every day Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men Look’d at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

This sonnet is a typically Keatsian feast of glorious sounds and luxurious rhymes. It is based upon Keats’ first experience of reading Chapman’s translation of Homer, and explores notions of the power of literature and the imagination. The poet tells us that Chapman’s work has inspired him to write; he intimates that he had never created “pure” poetry until “bold” Chapman encouraged him to “speak out”. On first looking into Chapman’s Homer is a tribute to Homer, to literature, and also, I think, to the genius of the poetic mind. From the opening line of the poem you might notice a connection to many of Keats’ early sonnets. It begins with a beautiful, mysterious, alluring statement, akin in tone to “Great spirits now on earth are sojourning” and “The poetry of earth is never dead.” As with so much of Keats’ work, the sheer music of his words is enough to entice and delight. The speaker begins by equating the act of reading with travelling. This metaphor extols the glory of the imagination, the “realms of gold”, where the narrator has journeyed, symbolising the great literary works of man.

Keats had a great fascination for the imagination; in fact, he once wrote that he was “certain of nothing” but the “truth” of the imagination. The sonnet depicts the travels of Odysseus around the “goodly states”, “kingdoms” and “islands”, which are described in Homer, and which Keats, through reading Chapman’s translation, has experienced himself. Keats often alludes to his belief in the potency of literature, and does so notably in his other sonnet ‘Keen, fitful gusts’. In that poem, he remembers the great works of Milton and Petrarch as he confronts the harshly critical literary world. These memories inspire him, and give him confidence, ensuring that he feels “little” of the “bleak air”. For me, the fact that Keats mentions so many great names from the distant past in this poem (Apollo, Homer and Cortez) highlights his burning ambition for recognition as a poet, and his concern for the writer’s role in society. He often refers to great poets of the past such as Milton and Shakespeare, as well as to fellow Romantic artists like Wordsworth and Haydon.

I feel like he was continuously comparing himself to the masters, reminding himself of that which he dreams of achieving. The reference to Apollo here prefigures the more important role that the god of poetry will play in Keats’ later works such as Hyperion. Within the octet there is an unmistakable impression of restlessness. The speaker is seemingly wandering from book to book, with no purpose or direction in mind. I think this reflects Keats’ early difficulties in finding poetic confidence. He speaks of how he had oft “been told” of “deep-brow’d Homer”. Perhaps Keats is acknowledging a feeling of inadequacy here — of being dwarfed by such a literary giant as Homer (often venerated as the first poet). This is consistent with much of Keats’ early verse, where there seems to be evidence of self-doubt and self-consciousness with regard to his credibility as a poet. For example, returning to ‘Keen, fitful gusts’, he acknowledges his youth and inexperience as he admits “I have many miles on foot to fare”.

Likewise, in On first looking into Chapman’s Homer he infers that he had never created anything of beauty until he was inspired by this translation of Homer; (“never did I breathe its pure serene/ Till I heard Chapman speak”.) It is as though Keats had felt like an intruder in the closeted world of literature — that poetry was strictly the “demesne” of Homer and such. But Chapman encourages Keats, urging him to speak out “loud and bold”. In the second half of the poem, as we enter the sestet, the verse completely alters in tone. The speaker is now inspired, empowered, and purposeful because of what he has read. Keats has created an intriguing connection between himself and the reader in this piece. The poem is a result of his inspiration from Chapman, and by writing his own beautiful sonnet, Keats seduces his reader into his poem in the same way that he was originally enthralled by Homer. The writer and reader share in the same experience. Keats compares himself to an astronomer and a famous explorer; since reading Homer the poet’s confidence has clearly grown rapidly!

He also becomes more poetic here, as he likens the discovery of his own creative genius to an astronomer’s discovery of a new planet, and to Cortez discovering South America. The caesura in the final line “Silent, upon a peak in Darien”, is wonderfully dramatic, and seems to echo the awe that the poet feels at realising his poetic potential, and the vast landscapes of beauty that his imagination is capable of conjuring. Another thing that I find really interesting in this poem is that it seems to show Keats’ ambition. It is hard to read it and not derive from it some notion of the immense task that Keats seems to have set himself. This is something that I have noticed in quite a lot of Keats’ work (perhaps it is most obvious in the piece ‘When I have fears’). Keats’ endeavours to perfect ancient and difficult poetic structures such as the ode and sonnet also seem to support this idea of ambition; he mentions it himself in a letter to Hessey, which he wrote while writing ‘Endymion’.

He writes that through attempting to master these challenging forms he had “ leaped headlong into the Sea” of poetry, and so become “better acquainted” with it than if he had “stayed upon the green shore” and taken “tea and comfortable advice.” Keats was uncompromising; he refused to take heed of the criticism of anyone but himself. And I think it’s a very good thing that he didn’t! Reviewed by Emily Ardagh On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer Introduction In A Nutshell It's 1816. John Keats is twenty-one years old and standing at the edge of a greatness he feels sure he will achieve. So what does he do with all that excitement? He writes a poem, of course. Keats is a Romantic poet, meaning he wrote passionately about his emotions and personal experiences. (They did lots of other stuff too— check it out .) This sonnet proclaims the virtue and beauty of a book he'd read. Actually, it's not even a new book, just a translation—George Chapman's version of Homer's work (check out more about Homer here ).

Really, though, the poem grows bigger than just a book review. By the end, we see that Keats has had a new encounter with the power of imagination. The sonnet, like so many of Keats's poems, has a tragic tone as we look back on it. Keats lived until only age twenty-five, succumbing to tuberculosis like several other members of his family. "On Looking into Chapman's Homer" is a window into the ambitions of a hopeful young man, who lived just long enough to leave us with some of the greatest poems in the English language. This one, for example, first appeared in the London newspaper The Examiner, in 1816, and then again a year later in Keats' first collection, given the very creative title of Poems. For John Keats, reading this one book, seeing the worlds created by the author inspires him to create. He feels as if he is an explorer looking out on an undiscovered ocean, a world of possibility. And that enthusiasm brings us along for the ride. Why Should I Care? Maybe you didn't eat the paste like we did, but you probably remember all the crafty fun of kindergarten.

Cut the shapes, color the paper—everything was about using your imagination. The word got thrown around a lot, especially by this guy , but, by the time we got to second grade or so, all that talk died down and it was all long-division and topic sentences. It's a shame that imagination has been branded as a kid's idea. For the Romantic poets, imagination was everything. It was the human capacity to create, discover, invent. Imagination was really just another way of saying intelligence. Imagination is also tough. In the Hebrew Bible, even God needed a break after six days of creating the world. Imagination takes a tremendous amount of energy—energy that is sparked by imaginative works. Come on, you've listened to your favorite song and then tried for three weeks to write one of your own. You even tried to learn guitar because you saw your friend in the talent show. You've written Twilight fan fiction, or maybe knitted a Team Edward tea cozy. Fine, maybe that's just us, but you get the point. John Keats ' "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" is about that same moment of inspiration. It's about being captivated by something amazing and pushed by it to create something amazing yourself.

So, dive right in and see what you can take from Keats' inspiration and apply it to your own.

Question: Which poet wrote a sonnet 'On first looking into Chapman's Homer'?
Answer: JOHN KEATS